BLOGS

Wrestlers' record better than expected

Blog: The Wildcat Word

When I talked to Eastmont wrestling coach Ken Hoyt at the beginning of the season, he wasn't expecting his young and inexperienced team to see much success. Surprisingly, the Wildcats are now sitting at 4-1 in league dual meets — but Hoyt isn't impressed.
"We should not be winning at the scores we have been," Hoyt told me when I dropped by Tuesday's wrestling practice. "Our job is to get these kids better, and we've seen some good kids at specific weights, but not across the board. It's been boiling down to our inexperienced kids against (our opponents') inexperienced kids, and we're coming out on top."
Essentially, Hoyt's point is that the Columbia Basin Big Nine isn't as tough as he was hoping it would be (save for powers Moses Lake and Wenatchee), and wrestling against the lesser competition isn't helping his kids.
"I would like our league to get tougher. It was a pleasure getting beaten by Moses Lake and Wenatchee because we got better on that night," he said.
Hoyt doesn't put much stock into dual meets as it is, and instead pointed to Eastmont's performances in tournaments as a way to gauge it's progress.
"The deeper we go into tournaments shows we're getting better," he said.
By those standards, the Wildcats have certainly grown this season — just not as much as they're dual-meet record may reflect. At the Marysville Tournament on Saturday, they placed four wrestlers and had eight others "knocking on the door," as Hoyt put it.